Recent developments and trends in activation analysis are reviewed. Instrumental and radiochemical neutron activation analysis, as well as charged particle activation analysis are considered. The present status of activation analysis is summarised and compared to inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. Some examples of recent applications are given.Key words: activation analysis, recent developments, comparison to other techniques.In a recent publication [1], Braun and Zsindely describe some recent trends in the use of instrumental methods for trace metal analysis. They chose 15 metals and counted the number of times the various instrumental analytical methods were used to determine them, as reported in Analytical Abstracts. For distinguishing the tendencies the results were grouped into two four-year periods 1981-1984 and 1985-1988. Emission spectrometry e.g. was used in 18.4% of the cases in 1981-1984 and in 11.5% in 1985-1988, a decrease of 6.9%. Also activation analysis has experienced an important downward shift. This is further illustrated by the fact that it moved from the fourth rank (after AAS, spectrophotometry and emission spectrometry) to the sixth rank (after the methods mentioned above plus polarography and X-ray fluorescence).A similar tendency, but less pronounced exists for PIXE, which moved from the tenth to the thirteenth rank. Braun and Zsindely [-1] attribute this to the fact that the need for expensive infrastructural tools (nuclear reactor, accelerator) have made these nuclear analytical methods less cost-effective than various newer methods. In addition, political pressures against many nuclear applications, especially those related to power generation, seem to have had a certain negative influence. Nuclear analytical methods have not lost, however, all of their appeal, but their application